Riverbed speeds backups to Nirvanix storage cloud

Riverbed has beefed up its Whitewater appliance – a device designed to automatically back data up to online storage services – adding hooks for the Nirvanix "cloud storage" service and support for backup software from EMC, Quest, and CA.

Dubbed a "cloud storage accelerator", Whitewater is an appliance that sits in your data center, dovetailing with traditional backup software via an API. Rather than back data up to local disks, it lets you automatically stream it to online storage services, things that people insist on calling storage clouds.

Previously, the appliances worked with backup software from Symantec (NetBackup and Backup Exec) and IBM (Tivoli), and it hooked into cloud stores services from Amazon (S3) and AT&T (Synaptic Storage as a Service). Now, it plugs into EMC NetWorker, Quest vRanger, and CA ARCserve Backup, and it streams data to the sky-high storage services from Nirvanix.

Nirvanix offers a storage cloud that spans seven separate nodes across the globe, from LA, Dallas, and New Jersey, to Frankfurt, Switzerland, and Toyko. The entire service is under a single namespace, but users can choose where their data is hosted. According to the company, over 1,200 businesses are using the service, which allows for unlimited uploads and downloads for a flat monthly rate

Riverbed has long offered appliances that optimize wide-area networks by deduping traffic, reducing the inefficiencies of underlying network protocols, and cutting down on the number of network round trips at the application layer. Whitewater takes this sort of technology to a slightly different market, working to speed backups to the heavens. The product is available as a physical appliance or as software, and if you like, you can refer to the software as a virtual appliance.

Eric Thacker, Riverbed director of product marketing for Whitewater, tells us that the company is also planning to hook the alliance into backup software from HP, Microsoft, Oracle, and Commvault, and cloud services from Microsoft (Azure), Google (App Engine), and Rackspace (Cloud Files). ®